Cal graduation rates divided along racial lines

"It is scandalous," said Harry Edwards, a professor emeritus of sociology at Cal. The African American activist
and scholar is a longtime critic of the athletic status quo. "It's an
outrage, especially as this situation has been a topic of debate for at
least 30 years."

Photo By Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle

Cal athletic director Sandy Barbour (left) and football coach Sonny Dykes leave a Cal game in August. The graduation rate for football players is the lowest among major college programs.

Photo By Michael Short/The Chronicle

Cal football team linebacker Khairi Fortt, right, meets with learning specialist Christine Ho for tutoring help with his American Studies class on the University of California campus in Berkeley.

Photo By Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

Just 4 in 10 black male athletes on average earn a degree from Cal
within six years of starting school, compared with 7 in 10 white male
athletes, according to the NCAA, which released graduation rates of students who entered college between 1998 and 2006.

Photo By Lance Iversen/The Chronicle

In October, the NCAA released figures revealing that Cal football and
men's basketball - the primary revenue-producing sports - had the worst
graduation performance of any major college program in the country. In
addition, a new study by two Cal scholars suggests lenient admissions
policies for athletes contributed to those substandard rates.

Photo By Michael Short/The Chronicle

A tag is seen on the bag of Cal football team linebacker Khairi Fortt as he attends an academic progress meeting with student athlete academic advisor Johnna Strenchockon on the University of California campus in Berkeley.

As all eyes focus on the rock-bottom graduation rates of men's basketball and football players at UC Berkeley, one stark division emerges: Black male athletes at Cal have far more trouble finishing school than their white counterparts.

Just 4 in 10 black male athletes on average earn a degree from Cal within six years of starting school, compared with 7 in 10 white male athletes, according to the NCAA, which released graduation rates of students who entered college between 1998 and 2006.

The statistics have led some critics to blame Cal officials for failing to address the academic needs of black athletes while using them to diversify the campus, improve the teams' athletic performance and generate revenue.

"It is scandalous," said Harry Edwards, a professor emeritus of sociology at Cal. The African American activist and scholar is a longtime critic of the athletic status quo. "It's an outrage, especially as this situation has been a topic of debate for at least 30 years."

While the debate has raged in the halls of academia for decades, the latest graduation figures bring the matter to the forefront.

In October, the NCAA released figures revealing that Cal football and men's basketball - the primary revenue-producing sports - had the worst graduation performance of any major college program in the country. In addition, a new study by two Cal scholars suggests lenient admissions policies for athletes contributed to those substandard rates.

Cal officials, in a conversation with The Chronicle last week, questioned the correlation between admissions policies and graduation rates. When asked what role race plays in the situation, administrators largely avoided the issue, citing the restrictions of Proposition 209. The 1996 state law prohibits consideration of race in admissions to California's public universities.

Task force formed

Athletic director Sandy Barbour acknowledged that the university has a problem. On Thursday, Barbour announced the formation of a task force to examine key factors in athlete academic success.

"The abysmal retention rates for black male revenue athletes illustrate that the most visible students of the athletic department are failing to earn a degree from UC Berkeley," write John Cummins and Kirsten Hextrum, whose new study examines how UC Berkeley has treated top student athletes for decades and how it has often failed to help them succeed academically at the top-ranked public university.

"If the campus is able to use these students to secure its promise of diversity, then the administration must ensure that all these students are supported until they earn a degree," says the report, done at the request of the university's Athletic Study Center, which offers academic support to Cal athletes. The findings were vetted by top Cal officials.

Hextrum, a doctoral student in the graduate school of education, was a two-time national champion with the Cal women's crew team as an undergrad from 2003 to 2007.

Cummins, a retired associate chancellor, ran intercollegiate athletics at Cal from 2004 to 2006, a time when many athletes who later failed to graduate were struggling academically.

"I didn't know enough. I really didn't understand the problem," Cummins acknowledged when asked what he did to address the issue during his tenure. "Even now I can't say I fully understand the complexity of intercollegiate athletics and why were we not doing it in the best way possible."

Focus on budget

Cummins said his primary focus at the time was to lift the secrecy surrounding the athletics budget, which became transparent for the first time under his watch.

According to federal graduation rates compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, most black male athletes who entered Cal between 1998 and 2006 failed to graduate in six years, with just 40 percent able to do so. In contrast, 68 percent of all white male athletes, who often come from more privileged backgrounds than their black counterparts, graduated during the same period. Among the non-athlete population, 87 percent of white males and 63 percent of black males graduated during those years.

Black students disproportionately come from lower-income families and often attend schools with fewer resources than their white counterparts.

After voters passed Prop. 209 in 1996 - and public universities stopped race-based admissions - the number of black students declined dramatically at Cal, but the university's goal to remain diverse continued.

"Black student athletes help to achieve this mission of diversity by increasing the number of black male students on the campus," Cummins and Hextrum write.

'Special admits'

Many of the black athletes are admitted under Cal's policy of "special admits." These are students with special talents - often elite athletes - who are allowed into Cal despite having a B-minus or even C average in high school, and significantly lower SAT scores than the average applicant. Most Cal students enter with an A average.

Underqualified students

The numbers suggest that Cal is admitting academically underqualified black male athletes yet fails to provide sufficient help to those students once they're admitted.

"Admitting these (underqualified) students adds very little in terms of true diversity," Edwards said. "It is simply dishonest.

"The athlete is separated out," he said. "No one else is under that kind of spotlight. And for many of these kids, as brave and upstanding as they are on the football field, they are in abject terror once they set foot in the classroom."

Derek Van Rheenen, director of Cal's Athletic Study Center, said black athletes can feel both isolated and spotlighted at Berkeley.

"They are invisible on campus and hyper-visible as athletes," Van Rheenen said. "They are in a difficult place - valued for their athletic potential and dismissed as potential academics."

Widespread problem

The problem of black men being underrepresented on campuses and overrepresented on athletic fields is widespread, the University of Pennsylvania reported this year. Its study of six major college conferences found that black men were less than 3 percent of the student body but 58 percent of football and basketball teams.

College officials say many students of all ethnicities simply value a professional athletic career ahead of earning a degree.

But fewer than 2 percent of all NCAA basketball and football players are drafted by the NBA and NFL, studies show. And of those, only a small number last more than one or two years in professional sports.

So some Cal professors are trying to counteract that attitude.

At the Athletic Study Center, Van Rheenen is working with a group of successful black men to set up a mentoring program - but whether athletes will have time to participate is another question. They're already stretched by the full-time demands of their academic work and playing a Division I sport.

"We don't want to overload them even more," Van Rheenen said.

The graduation rates are one of the many problems facing Cal athletics. At a recent meeting on campus, where Cummins and Hextrum presented their findings, some faculty members wondered whether the pressure to succeed on the field has been intensified by the need to pay off the debt on newly renovated Memorial Stadium.

Hextrum called it "an ethical dilemma."

"Are we going to say we will continue to have these students - mostly men of color - who don't graduate, and that it is worth it to pay off the debt?" she asked.